Practical Disc Dog Puppy Bitework with Wham!
Jack and Wham! work on some disc dog puppy bitework on the big field at the Fahle Ranch.The focus of this session is keeping this young frisbee phenom on task and engaged and to develop and reinforce basic disc dog mechanics: Bite, Drop, and Give
The Give is a retrieve to the hand. A cued Give is a foundational skill that is not super useful in the actual performance of disc dog freestyle, and has huge applications for.... Rollers are thrown in for action and variety. Wham! is a 16 week old Aussie.
Flexible Criteria
Jack is working several things in this session, not overly focused on any one thing. This is a good practice when it comes to working with a puppy or dog that has trouble staying engaged.
The cued Drop is the lynchpin of this session. It is used to manufacture a cookie at any time. This is also an excellent tactic for puppies, young dogs, and dogs that have trouble staying engaged. For short attention span theater, the answer is Drop!
The Bite criteria is a bit soft in this session. Jack has several things going on which we will talk about below. That is more than made up for with the focus on the cued Drop and the use of the re-grab to get multiple bites and keep the game close, successful and engaging.
Employing the Regrab
The re-grab is employed for two purposes in this session. As mentioned above, the re-grab is being used to keep the dog engaged and successful, manufacturing a re-bite at any time and placing reinforcement and excitement on and around the handler.
This is an excellent practice for young dogs, puppies, and dogs who are likely to disengage or take off with the disc. Nothing like placing all the action and reinforcement on and around the handler. You can hear that Wham! approves – or gets angry, not sure which… 😉
The re-grab is also employed as a backchain of the Give. Notice the timing of the marker on several of the re-grabs and note that the marker happens when Wham! places the disc in Jack’s hand.
This timing criteria and the timing of the marker is a great way to get a dog to want to put the disc in your hand. Wham! is standing in front of Jack and trying to engage him by stuffing the disc into his hand. This is a tremendously powerful flip or role reversal: who’s shaping whom? Wham! seems to be trying to shape Jack into playing by teasing him with the disc. Powerful stuff!
Rollers for Big Action
As the game gets cranking and exciting, Jack capitalizes on these high energy levels by testing Wham!’s chase and retrieval skills. This is high level performance for this young pup, but it doesn’t seem to be any challenge at all due to the timing and leveraging of the energy levels of the game.
Wham! even accidently drops the disc and picks it up to fix her own retrieve. She does this because any good puppy knows that the cued Drop makes all good things happen, and you can’t drop it if you ain’t carrying it… duh…
Jack even asks her to go get the disc that was prematurely dropped. Super cool stuff.
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